Can Online Ads Be Measured Like TV?

Research firms Marketing Evolution and InsightExpress are teaming up to create a new system designed to make the effectiveness of online advertising more comparable with traditional media, especially television. Is this a good thing for online creative? Will a metric that manages to compare apples to organges help convince those marketers who remain skeptical about this whole Interweb thing to reach deeper into their pocketbooks and really invest instead of pussy footing around? Online Media Daily seems optimistic:

The system [ADI Plus] will officially be unveiled during a presentation in New York this morning…[it] mixes pre-testing of the creative component of online ads and the ongoing tracking of online campaign ad effectiveness with new data for estimating the so-called reach and frequency of online advertising campaigns.
That last element is a key development for online marketers, giving them the ability to estimate the online equivalent of TV’s gross rating points, and to do so at local market levels.
The dominance of TV data in marketing mix models has been cited by executives in other media–especially print, and out-of-home–and even media planning guru Erwin Ephron as a factor helping to rationalize the effectiveness of TV advertising, even as the medium fragments and grows more cluttered and less likely to be exposed to digital consumers.
“Having the same measurements as their offline counterparts will be huge for online,” boasts Fern Schapiro, executive vice president-client service and marketing at InsightExpress.